Cape Town had the highest rate of strangulation of women in urban South Africa over a five-year period, a study has revealed....Shahnaaz Suffla, lead author, and teammates looked at the distribution and patterns of homicide strangulation of women in Cape Town, Johannesburg, Durban and Pretoria....Cape Town was the only city where the number of strangulations of women had increased annually over the period studied, from 17 in 2001 to 25 in 2005....Suffla said most of the killings occurred in a domestic context in all four cities, suggesting that the perpetrator was an intimate partner or acquaintance of the victim.

"We will continue this project to gain a fuller and deeper understanding of the study as it contributes to the gendered homicide risk profile for a country (SA) which is considered to have one of the highest intimate female homicide rates in the world," she said.